Chapter 47: The Line In The Margin
Agent Frank arrived on the second afternoon with a duffel bag and a rostered assignment sheet that had two veteran Heroes on it and, on the bottom line, in handwriting, himself.
He had put himself there. And it was for a good reason.
Aide Lance had been conflicted about who to send to Theo. The young man needed a protector, that much was settled. But he did not just need a protector.
And Frank knew what he needed. Frank had a great idea about how to get the Aide what he needed, because he was the best man for the job.
So he had been carrying it around in his chest for a week like a stone in a shoe. The begging, and the flat answer he got back for it. He had been the prodigy of watching, the same one who caught the Gate and Theo’s address out of a stack nobody else could read, and his eyes were flawless. If there was anything to catch with Theo, he was the man to catch it.
So he had taken the shift. Somebody needed to sit outside room 1104 with a folding chair and a clipboard on his knee. Somebody needed to write down who came, who went, what was said, and what a young man with no license and no history did when he thought nobody was writing it down.
Frank was good at watching. It was, in fact, the only thing he had ever been better at than the men promoted over him.
Here is what Agent Frank watched.
He watched Theolyne Chadwick carry a woman in a wheelchair to a bathroom four times, one arm under her knees and one behind her shoulders, and wait outside the door each time with his back turned and his hands folded like an usher.
He watched him argue with a billing clerk for forty minutes about the daily rate on a medically induced coma, lose, pay it, and thank her.
He watched him learn the night shift’s names. All of them. Including the man who came for the sharps bins, who had worked that hospital for nine years and had to be asked twice because nobody had ever wanted it before.
On the third morning Frank stood in the doorway with a tray he had not been asked to carry, and tried, once, to earn his stone back.
"Sir. That machine on your wife. That’s Tower-grade suppression, isn’t it? Association records say only four hospitals in Meteor City are cleared to run one." He paused casually, the way he had practiced it on the drive over. "Somebody must have pulled a serious favor to get her onto it."
Theo looked up from the basin where he was wringing out a cloth, and went on wringing it.
"Ten thousand a day. No favors. Would you like some soup?"
"...I’ve eaten, sir."
"You said that yesterday and then you ate."
Frank ate.
That night he sat in the corridor with the report form on his knee and the box marked OBSERVATIONS OF NOTE staring up at him, and he thought about what he actually had. A man who mopped a corridor he did not work in. A man who fed a woman who never spoke, a spoonful at a time, and waited between each one. A man who paid a bill that would have broken a Guild Master and then apologised to the clerk for taking up her afternoon.
He wrote: Subject cooperative. No irregular contacts. No irregular activity.
He looked at it for a long time. The pen dried at the tip. It was the truth, and it was worth nothing, and he could not work out whether that meant he had failed or whether it meant there was genuinely nothing under this man but a husband.
Frank turned the page over and, in the margin where nobody would read it, wrote one more line.
He most likely knows what I’m doing but never expresses any discomfort or asks questions.
***
The call came on the fourth day at the hospital, while Theo was on his knees in the corridor with a mop, being told off by a senior nurse who had given up sounding like she meant it.
It was Billy, from the bank, doing an excellent job of not sounding excited.
"Lord Theolyne. The transfer cleared this morning, and the seller’s lawyer has released everything. Congratulations, sir. The lake house is yours. Keys are in my drawer whenever you want them."
Theo stood up in the middle of the corridor with the mop still in one hand and the water still running off it onto the floor he had just done.
"Say that again."
"The house is yours, sir."
"This is amazing! In that case, can we move in tomorrow?"
Billy paused on the line.
"Tomorrow? Is there a reason why you seem to be in such a hurry?"
Theo did not answer directly. Instead he asked.
"Is there a reason why I cannot be?"
Billy sounded unsure of himself.
"Uh, no, actually. It’s your house, you can move in anytime you want. I can make arrangements to meet you there tomorrow."
Theo nodded at nobody and thanked the man before hanging up.
Back in the room, Estea had rolled her chair in past the partition and was reading a hospital magazine, one of the old ones off the rack by the lifts with a curled corner. Theo could feel her gaze pierce him even though she never lifted her eyes off the page.
He sighed and turned away, went out of the room, and off the floor, to meet Doctor Nischov.
He settled into the man’s office. There was a tablet propped in front of the doctor, but the historical drama was paused this time, a woman frozen mid-sentence in a hallway of stone.
Theo observed him for a moment, starting with small talk.
"You’ve always loved these things, they’re from the pre-apocalypse right? How were they even preserved?"
Doctor Nischov chuckled as he responded to Theo.
"It was all thanks to Movie-man."
He gave an honorable salute, and then a one-second silence.
Theo raised a brow. Actually, he had heard of the legendary Movie-man. He had a skill called Storage Box, enabling him to preserve any media within himself. In the Apocalyptic era of the world, his skill was instrumental to how the world was preserved, film and music and record, all of it carried around inside one man while the cities came down.
He didn’t have to fight or anything, but was still able to make as much impact in the new world as the Heroes that had to defend lives did.
"But I know you’re not here for Movie-man. Is everything alright, Theo?"
Doctor Nischov sounded a bit cautious when speaking to Theo. Since the young man had become a Royal Beneficiary of the hospital, he could not afford to speak to him anyhow. Even a seasoned doctor like him could still be displaced by the authorities if he made such a mistake.
Theo sighed and said it in a simple, nonchalant tone, the way another man might ask for the bill.
"I want to buy all the equipment that is being used to sustain my wife right now. Instead of having to pay daily, I think a better investment will be to buy it and put it at home."
The doctor opened his mouth. Nothing came out of it.